CLASSIC MUCK-SHIFTING

As the summer show season will be rapidly upon us, David Wylie looks back at the highlights of the Morris Leslie 2022 classic working weekend

Perthshire-based Morris Leslie Group has a diverse range of business interests, from UK-wide plant hire, through machinery and vehicle auctions to a varied residential and commercial property portfolio. This includes the site of former RAF Errol, the long-abandoned WW2-era airfield, which was purchased in 1988 and provides the ideal base for large-scale auctions. In 1997, the Morris Leslie Group purchased the fully-operational Perth Airport, formally RAF Scone, and both sites now feature a mix of business and residential areas.

Below and far right: Rope-operated scraper boxes were a common sight on post-WW2 UK sites, before the development of hydraulic-operated machines.

Event Background

As an avid collector of classic plant and tractors, Morris Leslie is keen to share his passion with others by organising a regular working event in Scotland. It’s is also an opportunity to raise a bit of money for one of his favoured charities, a Perth Airportbased air ambulance service. His inaugural classic plant working event was held in 2018, and an even larger gathering took place the following year. The planned events in 2020 and 2021 were cancelled due to the pandemic, and the 2022 working weekend took place in glorious summer sunshine at Errol Airfield.

A block of land adjacent to the vehicle auction site was earmarked for residential housing development. It was also next to a grain processing shed, which is operational for five weeks a year during harvest time. The requirement for a noise suppression bund to screen it from the new houses provided an ideal opportunity for old-school dozers and scraper boxes to show what they could do.